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03-16-2025, 11:44 AM (This post was last modified: 03-16-2025, 11:47 AM by jdougc. Edited 1 time in total.)
RE: Pokey49 - Therapy Thread
How did you feel, that is the measure of success. Consider keeping a journal of how you feel and what changes you made.
As far as changing the Flow Rate graph, right click on the right side of the graph to get that menu. and go to "Y-axis" See how mine shows up? [attachment=76755]
03-16-2025, 01:56 PM (This post was last modified: 03-16-2025, 02:04 PM by super7pilot. Edited 3 times in total.)
RE: Pokey49 - Therapy Thread
Pokey49, Nice result. jdougc is correct in evaluating your therapy on how you feel. It is also true that you need to use the numbers in your OSCAR charts to "dial in" your pressures to facilitate a compromise between feeling better while also being mindful of the ease of sticking with your therapy.
My sleep Dr. said this exact thing. Yes! Try for low AHI numbers, But be even more aware of how you feel. She also said that just like folks not on pap. You will have greats nights and not so great nights and some bad nights.
As your numbers are low. It's now up to your body to get used to sleeping soundly with pressurized air. And this can take time.
And mask leaks can def result in the not so good nights. But it is the good effect of not having apnea's where one's Co2 is high for long periods. The longer more restful sleep will come after your bodies acclimation period. There is a section in the top left of your oscar that has several tabs. "details/events/NOTES/bookmarks/search" Click on the "notes" tab and boom. You can make a journal entry for that night. Might be good to also write in in a diary. Something I wish I had done while wading through my therapy.
Here is a great Lanolin product. It's pure and so has no added aroma. So it is kind of "industrial" smelling. But it's as thick as axle grease and makes a great barrier and seals really well as it's sticky. As it has no petroleum, It will not degrade the silicon in our masks.
I would agree with judging how therapy is working by how one feels rather than solely getting hung up on numbers. Although numbers do matter say if your fasting blood sugar is high or your BP is 200/100 though you still might feel ok in both instances.
That said I have clearly noticed feeling better in the morning and throughout the day when I’ve had a good night of cpap therapy. But I’ve only been at it for a short time. Hopefully practice will make perfect , or good most of the time.
I’m putting high value on the advice I’ve been getting here on this forum. My best friend has been on cpap for a while now and he struggled with it for a good year but he had no one giving advice or encouragement along the way. He would have likely succeeded much sooner if he knew about this forum. Really glad I found you all.
Pokey, One thing about pap therapy and advice from this forum.
Any errant advice given isn't going to kill you and it's easy to revert and go in another direction and it's all easily and quickly verified by OSCAR and how we feel. It is a rather unique thing to pap.
here's OSCAR for last night. The CAs are back, but for the most part at the end of my sleep cycle and only 2+. This is when my mask seems to go soft and squishy from the warmth of my breath all night and no matter what I do I cant stop the leaks and it was hard to get a nice full breath. Do such circumstances correlate with having CAs??
This morning at 530 I gave up trying to stop the leaks and took it off. I tried manipulating the flow graph as suggested. I'm sorry but I don't see much of a difference when I do. I am hoping to try an F40 mask tonight to see if it will have less tendency to leak late in the sleep cycle.
Sleep Wake Junk - you're between waking and sleeping, bouncing between both, it confuses your breath control because sleep breath control is steady rhythm like while wake breathing is more erratic
INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEBSITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.
From the apneaboard wiki, Sleep-Wake-Junk - Clusters of apnea and hypopnea events concentrated mainly around periods of sleep-wake transition. In general Sleep-wake-junk (SWJ) is not regarded as "real" since they do not occur during periods of sleep, but may be during semi-awake periods or "dozing". Example of SWJ
So I’m trying to understand how does this “sleep wake junk”, erratic breathing between wakefulness and sleep cause or coincide with central apneas.
I have a biomedical background and am always trying to understand how things tick
